Where Miss Snark vented her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushed them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark. The blog is dark--no further updates after 5/20/2007.

11.20.2006

Dialing for Dali

Dear Miss Snark,

I tried to send a query with a SASE to your blog site (uranitwit@wtf.comma), but I think the envelope didn't go through and perhaps the stamp came off. Now my URL seems to be pasted to the floppy disk and everything looks like cyber postmarked Salvador Dali pocketwatches. Please advise. Hope this message finds you well & happy.

Thinking about Salvador Dali makes me very happy.

I can still remember the frisson of energy I felt when I saw a real Dali painting for the first time. I'd seen posters and other kinds of reproductions and thought he was amazingly funny but only when I saw the actual art did I begin to comprehend the magnitude of his genius.

I can't afford the real deal so I have to settle for pictures but this one always reminds me about the nature of art and beauty.

PS That email address works better if you include a crisp twenty dollar bill with Mr. Clooney's phone number on it.

I love Dali too. When I was 15 (many moons/mooses ago), I begged my mom to take me around the county to see different displays of Dali's art. Mama Moose -- figuring this was better than most pursuits a 15-year-old was interested in -- agreed. Over the next year or two we went all over the US to see his work (we also made many stops to see the Impressionists since they were her favorites). A great experience all around.

Great Art and Artists cause the mind to go silent - there are no words that can express what is present and if there are words there are so many necessary to describe the experience that there may as well not be any. It is at this point that the space bewteen you and the infinite vanishes. Dali has been immortalized by his own works.

And so, it is my profound wish that we all ultimnately touch within each of us that which the great ones have touched!

My house if filled with the works of Dali. He was a real character, but his eye and hand were nothing short of amazing. As mentioned, the St. Pete museum is more than words can describe. I just wish I could capture 10% of the emotion in what I write as compared to what he was able to accomplish with a few strokes of the brush. Miss Snark, I'm glad that you're a fan too. Sal...what a guy.

Mtv hits the nail on the head: " Great Art and Artists cause the mind to go silent."

Great art is transcendent.

And the work of Spanish artists is even better in Spain. Go to Barcelona. A train journey to Figueras, and you can see Dali's work and the house in which he lived - amazing.

In Barcelona itself: a Picasso museum (interesting for his early work), the wonderful Fundacion Miro (an artist I did not fully appreciate until visiting this museum), and the Fundacion Tapies, for work by Antonio Tapies (beautiful).

Back to the transcendent part: in that respect, my best experience was a room at the Rothko exhibition at MOMA, about 8 years ago. I sat down, surrounded by his 'black' paintings, and felt as though everything I could ever need or want, let alone hope to express, was in that room. I did not want to leave – EVER.

I had tickets to the huge Picasso exhibit at MOMA back in the 80's... They filled 40 galleries on three floors in (for those of you out of town) the entire Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) with just the paintings. They could have filled the museum a second time with Picasso's sculpture and pottery. That was before they found barns and warehouses filled with his unknown artwork.

I saw the blue boy, the Ladies of Anvignon, Guerinica, the cute little chimp with the volkswagen head, his constructionism and all the rest. For the first half of the twentieth century, Picasso was the Big Man in the world of art. He was the mover and shaker and lead them all to modern art.

Not true! You can afford a Dali. He produced in such bulk, with such an eye for profit, that there are a lot of reasonably priced originals around - not full-scale paintings, but drawings or prints or something along those lines. And, as Gertrude Stein apparently said: You can buy clothes or pictures. Hold off on the new stilettos for a year or so, and you'll have the money you need to buy a Dali. So many people think that collecting good art is out of their reach, but it's really not.